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Scuba Dive – Or Snorkel – With Sting Rays

Grand Cayman Island’s Sting Ray City offers a unique opportunity for every aquatic adventure seeker. You can scuba dive, or snorkel with the sting rays – and if you like you can stand in waist deep water just to pet these amazing creatures.

Sting Ray City lies in Grand Cayman Bay. The “city” itself boasts a depth of only around 25-feet. The shallow water gives divers an ideal opportunity for decomp diving after a plunge to 100-feet or more on Cayman wall.

But this attraction isn’t just for divers. Some areas of the city are shallow enough that you can stand in waist deep water, or strap on a mask, snorkel, and fins to frolic with the rays.

Sting Ray City provides entertainment for divers, and their non-diving family members.

Local dive boat operators started years ago developing Sting Ray City. The rays come into the bay because it’s shallow, and not so inviting to the sea creatures that prey on them. The bay gives them safety.

Local dive operations realized the presence of the rays would appeal to dive and snorkel enthusiasts alike, so they started feeding the rays to keep them around. Now boatloads of people constantly show up, and anchor at the city’s location with crowds of snorkelers, and divers armed with squid to feed the rays.

The rays know feeding time is here when they spot those boats. And when the people jump into the water they’re bombarded with a swarm of sting ray feeding frenzy.

Sting rays don’t have teeth. They eat by sucking their food into their mouth. Visitors often return to the boat with Sting Ray Hickies.

Of course the rays aren’t the only thing to see.

Plenty of fish come around for a morsel of squid too. And once I got some great footage of a large green moray eel with a little red reef shrimp dancing around in front of him. I was amazed the shrimp wasn’t eaten.

When you visit Grand Cayman Island be sure to make it a point to scuba dive – or at least pay a snorkel visit to Sting Ray City. You’ll be glad you had this experience.

I remember when Steve died. It was rare for something like that to happen.

Saw a documentary once from a Canadian ocean research group. They decided to find out just how easy it is to get a ray to sting you. They used a 2 x 4 with a boot on the end, and tried several times “stepping on” the ray.

The ray just kept sliding out from under the boot until it finally came down dead center, and the ray couldn’t get away.

He put his barb all the way through the 2 x 4.

At Sting Ray City the rays seem to know they rely on the visitors for food. I managed to hold one once. He kept trying to slide out of my arms to one side or the other, but I kept his nose against my chest by following along with him.